Kenny McNeil also told the Health and Social Security Scrutiny Panel yesterday that the Hospital was still experiencing recruitment issues owing to a ‘variety of factors’.
He added that there was a ‘worldwide recruitment problem for nurses’ and many nurses who moved to Jersey from the UK and brought their families with them faced a number of restrictions, particularly relating to housing and the cost of living.
In 2012 a moving allowance of £3,000 was introduced for all nurses recruited from outside the Island. However, this was stopped by the Health Department a short time later, Mr McNeil said.
As well as their full-time contract, nurses can also offer to work on a team of bank nurses. Bank nurses can be called in for extra shifts in case of sickness or emergency.
Mr McNeil said that in 2011, more than 14,000 shifts were covered by bank staff. This figure increased to 22,501 shifts in 2012, and in 2014 this had risen further to 25,212. So far this year, more than 16,000 shifts have been covered by bank nurses.
He said that although participating in bank shifts was optional, some staff felt ‘pressurised’ into working additional hours.
‘There is an expectation of the staff, and people sometimes do feel pressurised to take on extra shifts and that is a concern to us,’ Mr McNeil said. ‘Nurses are like that, they do not want to let anybody down.’
Deputy Richard Renouf, chairman of the Scrutiny panel, asked Mr McNeil if any nurses had approached him with financial concerns or saying that they felt they had to work extra shifts for more money. Mr McNeil said: ‘Many of them were saying that they had to do the bank work in order to get by. And it made up their extra pay. That came up in discussion quite often with staff – that the bank does help their pay.’
The panel also heard that the vacancy rate for nursing staff should be five per cent or less. However, Mr McNeil said that, at one time, the Hospital had a nine per cent vacancy rate and this put them ‘in the red’ and contributed towards an increase in bank shifts. The Hospital currently has 33 vacancies across nine departments; one has eight vacancies.
Deputies Geoff Southern and Terry McDonald were also sitting on the panel.
JERSEY’S largest nursing union has not ruled out balloting its members over industrial action in response to the States’ pay offer, it was revealed in August.
Earlier this year it was announced that all public-sector staff would be facing a pay freeze, with the exception of nurses and midwives, who are to receive a 0.4 per cent increase.
The freeze came as part of a series of cuts to help plug a predicted £145 million budget deficit by 2019. In August both Unite – the Island’s largest union – and the civil servant union Prospect warned that they were considering strike action over the pay freeze and other States cost-cutting measures.
Bob King, the leader of Prospect, said that a series of co-ordinated strikes could begin as early as September, and Nick Corbel, of Unite, revealed that their members voted overwhelmingly to reject the pay freeze and voted in favour of industrial action in an indicative survey.
Kenny McNeil, chairman of the Nurses and Midwives Joint Executive (staff side), says that he wants further discussions with the States Employment Board, which sets public-sector pay, before deciding whether to issue a ballot of members to launch industrial action.
